Engaging Fluid Mindfulness

I am writing this blog today in the wave of inspiration from a workshop I facilitated recently, entitled Fluid Mindfulness: Deepening into Being with Continuum Movement.

Continuum to me has always been a mindfulness practice. Before beginning my intensive dive into the mysteries of Continuum with its founder, Emilie Conrad, I had been meditating intensively with Vipassana as taught by S.N. Goenka. I had sat in silence observing the arising and passing of phenomena via breath and body sensations for ten, twenty or thirty days at a stretch for fourteen years. I had done various other meditation practices before that, having always been drawn to learning how to be present.

The essence of mindfulness is presence, being aware in the present moment. Our body sensations and feeling tones serve as gateways through which the present moment enters our experience directly. The mind's job is awareness, which enables us to appreciate and be with what is passing through, and to make informed decisions.

For most of us, our minds are very busy analyzing, categorizing, and sorting our experience. We tend to occupy ourselves preparing for the future by worrying and reviewing the past. Our minds whirr through the same old ruts over and over again, trying to work out what happened back then and how to avoid having it happen again, or how to get more of the same if we liked it. Present time is outside of the loop. We are so busy interpreting what happens that we do not actually pay attention as it happens. How do we break this cycle?

We need some way of quieting the active mind. There is nothing wrong with the mind being active. Our uniquely human characteristic of being able to look ahead and plan for the future is essential to being able to function in modern, civilized life. If we are locked into constant planning mode, however, we miss essential knowledge that enables us to plan wisely.

A major intention of mindfulness practice is to support the possibility of wise discernment. This requires being aware of what is actually happening in the moment. It is not about what we wish or hope to have happen. It is not about what we fear may happen, although these are part of what may be occurring in present time.

Being aware in this moment requires paying attention with equanimity. We practice receiving what this moment has to offer. We practice acceptance, being with, meeting what presents without criticism or judgment. We practice compassionate being. What is the gift of this moment?... And this moment?... And this one?...

In order to receive the gift of this instant, we must let go of what we received five minutes ago. We must free ourselves of the gift received one minute ago, or one year ago, or a lifetime ago. All that we let go of will still be there waiting for us if we want to attend to it again. If we are to meet this time fully, we must disrobe, remove our outfits from the past, and face this moment in naked awareness. 

We are challenged to let go of the various ways we identify ourselves. Beginners' mind is about being here, being open to discover who and what and how we are in this moment. This requires a quiet attentive mind.

Where does Continuum fit in this picture?

Mindful Continuum 

Continuum quiets our minds and helps us to hone our attention in several ways. One important aspect of Continuum is that it slows us down. We use unusual breaths, sounds and movements that, amongst other things, interrupt familiar patterns of attention, thinking, and movement. 

To do a Continuum sequence, we must pay attention to how we are sounding, breathing, or moving, or we will tend to revert to old patterns. In open attention, we listen for how our bodies respond to the breaths, sounds, or movement we have just offered. We orient to what is novel, unpredictable, unexpected, and outside our usual repertoire. This involves heightened awareness of the now.

When I practiced Vipassana, it could literally take days of silence for my mind to get quiet. One of the things I loved about Continuum immediately was that practicing the unfamiliar took all of my attention. My mind actually settled down!

Supporting the settling is the effect Continuum has on the nervous system. In our modern, western culture, we are probably all are on overdrive much of the time. We live with our sympathetic, fight-flight nervous system on guard, ready for the next threat to come at us. The high speed of our cars, electronics, even our stoves (or microwaves), keep us over-stimulated, on the alert. Rather than having time to balance this heightened level of alertness, we tend to either collapse with more stimulation like television, or with sleeping pills.

When people first come to Continuum, it is not unusual for them to fall asleep. They discover how exhausted they really are when they begin to slow down. As their nervous systems begin to settle, and their tissues become more fluid, awareness becomes more subtle. A plethora of interesting sensations and micro-movements begins to replace the dreams and snores.

The variety of experience catches our attention. We begin to find ourselves in present time, being aware and perhaps delighted.

Feeling Good, Being Present

As in other mindfulness practices, one challenge in Continuum is our tendency to become attached to what feels good or familiar. This can be particularly confusing in Continuum as we learn to open to the possibility of intense pleasure in the body-mind. Pleasure can be habit-forming once we allow ourselves to tolerate it. 

Most of us have learned early in life that pleasure in the body is somehow sinful or shameful, to be associated only with sex. We have learned to limit ourselves in being with what feels good just as we have learned to numb ourselves against what feels bad. As we begin to thaw, the intensity of sensation we experience may be overwhelming, triggering old defense mechanisms we have developed in order to survive as sensitive little ones. 

Learning to feel can become seductive. We may develop a new addiction, seeking pleasure in our Continuum practice. We are then shocked when we run up against old walls of protection, and we discover pain where we expected delight.

This is similar to the dangers of experiencing pleasant sensations during meditation. We then tend to look for and expect that experience to repeat itself. In other words, we become locked in the past, projecting it into the future, and missing what actually is available for us in the this moment.

Learning to open to pleasure can be a new experience if we have been in the habit of focusing on what hurts or annoys us. True delight however, awaits in our perception of the whole. Our challenge is to be with what is, to be with all of what is, rather than just little parts of it we happen to be interested in. Rather than swinging from one side of a pendulum to the other, we begin to rest in the middle, in the space between.

Can we hold in our awareness both the pleasure and the pain? Can we be with both the longing and the aversion? And the space between? Can we experience both the scars of our conditioned experience and the profound, ever-present bio-intelligence that knows how to form and re-form us in every moment?

Fluid Mindfulness

I return here to the title, Fluid Mindfulness. Continuum takes us on a journey of discovery of our fluid nature. We melt into an intelligent and creative puddle and re-invent ourselves within a nurturing field.

It seems to me that mindfulness is by definition a practice of fluidity. If I am to be in each moment, I must flow from one experience to the next. Where I cling to the past or the familiar, I solidify. Where I let go, my tissues melt along with my psyche.

The question becomes then, if mindfulness is a practice of fluidity, is not fluidity a  of mindfulness? 

Playing for Life

“When enough people raise play to the status it deserves in our lives, we will find the world a better place.” 

- Stuart Brown, in Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul

My latest inspiration is a fascinating book on play by play specialist, Stuart Brown. Inquiring into the purpose of the seemingly purposeless activities of play, Brown acknowledges that animals that play have larger brains and better survival rates. Humans who play stimulate development of several important areas of the brain. These include the amygdala, which processes emotions and emotional memories, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which processes executive decisions, and is involved in such functions as commitment in relationship and being able to see things from another person’s perspective. 

One might think that play is essential to human performance. Perhaps, the modern, western attitude toward play as a waste of time has outlived its period.

The Fluid Play of Continuum

When I think about play, my mind immediately goes to Continuum Movement. It is definitely my main play activity. Although Continuum has clear purpose, which includes enhancing health, flexibility, resilience, and creativity on all levels, and we use specific breaths, sounds and movements for specific purposes, the primary effects of Continuum seem to depend on what we call, "open attention." This is a time of simply listening or being with how our body mind responds to the new context we have offered it through those breaths, sounds and movements. To me, this is a mindfulness practise. It deepens my ability to be. It also usually feels good, seduces my attention, intrigues me, and registers as fun.

As is often true with children's play, our activity in open attention is not externally prescribed or designed. We take delight in the novel, the unknown, the unpredictable. We orient towards pleasure. We often emerge feeling renewed and rejuvenated. The world looks fresh. Our perception has shifted. Our ability to meet what arises in our lives is mysteriously strengthened. Our hearts have opened. At the end of a Continuum workshop, the participants usually feel like important friends, if not long lost family. 

Emilie Conrad, founder of Continuum, recently co-taught a workshop with Stephen Porges, who has described the polyvagal and social nervous system. This system includes the amygdala mentioned above, and other structures contributing to our ability to perceive and appropriately interact with social cues. Inspired by Porges, Conrad has realized that Continuum can be used to stimulate the facial muscles and senses in a way that supports the social nervous system. 

All of this is sounding much like play to me!

Broadening the Definition

Continuum is only one way to pursue play. When I look at my life, I must admit that most of it fits the definition of play in some ways. Even my work. 

If play is defined as a safe environment in which to try things out and develop skills of living, I cannot resist looking at therapy, and even Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy, as an example. 

In Biodynamics, the client is mostly lying quietly on a massage table while the practitioner sits quietly with hands gently holding the client's head, feet, sacrum or other body part. How can this be play? 

There is an important aspect of Biodynamics that I see as bringing it into the realm of play, or at least a near relative. We call it the relational field. Coming into relationship with the client is a carefully cultivated art in Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy. We aim to create a safe relational field where the client can deeply settle. Within that field, no action is required. There is nothing the client needs to do. The practitioner, also, primarily practices resting into the larger field of the Breath of Life, supporting its mysterious work. As in open attention in Continuum, we intend a particular context or environment for the tissues, cells and psyche, and observe how the bio-intelligence unfolds. This, to me, is play of the highest order!

Other kinds of therapy also provide play opportunities. A general intention of psychotherapy is to provide a safe environment in which to explore and repair wounds of the psyche. A soothing massage may allow the client to rest into an imaginal world where, like in dreaming, new perspectives flourish. Creative, expressive therapies are clearly utilizing play for healing. 

Play in Life

If play is a purposeless activity that fulfills important life-generating purpose, how can we get more of it in our lives? In these challenging times of rapid change and diminishing resources, this may be an essential question to be living.

How can play more in our lives?

Everyone these days seems to know that it is important to take time off, and to have balance between work and play in our activities. At the same time, how many people do you know who complain about life speeding up, and not having time to engage in their hobbies, take that trip they've been dreaming about, or even go for a walk?

Life in the 21st century is full speed. Even our recreational activities are often speedy. Television, computer games, texting friends, keeping up with Facebook, Twitter, or whatever electronic pursuit we engage in, all keep our nervous systems accelerated. I watch my fourteen-year old step-daughter playing Monopoly, a game from before my time. We play it together in the old way, the we did when I was a child, with a board on the dining room table; but when she is on her own, out comes her iPod and, behold, there is another Monopoly game! I wonder if I could keep up with the speed of it... And, her partner has become her iPod. What does this teach in terms of social nervous system and social skills?

Our nervous systems seldom have a chance to rest in our modern world. We are often set on fight-flight 24 hours a day. What does it take to create the kind of spaciousness and safety of play? Do game boys do it for us? Do our children learn the same skills on Ping as we did playing marbles with our friends? Is this play? This is an inquiry. I don't pretend to have answers. My specialty seems to be questions.

What interests me is how we can attain the kinds of benefits Brown describes for play in our everyday lives.

Spending thirty days at a time sitting meditating in silence taught me a lot about this subject. This used to be my favourite play activity until I dropped into Continuum. Both activities as mindfulness practices support me in perceiving and experiencing space in my life, even with my ridiculously full schedule. I can walk through a busy city street now and be aware of my breath and subtle sensations in my body. I can cultivate presence in any moment, even as I type this page.

I think this, too, has something to do with play. The results are similar. I am supported in meeting what arises in my life with wisdom, creativity, resilience, and appreciation. I experience pleasure. Life can be fun. Can life be play? Can your life be play?

Nature, Nurture, Violence, and Compassion

There are natural disasters. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis all express the fiery aspect of Mother Earth. Sometimes, she needs to let off steam, perhaps do some violent housecleaning. If people are in the way, they suffer the consequences. Perhaps, other more natural creatures do not experience these acts as violent, but we humans do.

Some earth fires may be natural or unnatural. Forest fires, for example, may be started by human carelessness or ignorance. Then, Nature uses the event for her own purposes.

Some violence, however, is clearly unnatural. Like the hunting of wild animals for sport, when hunger is not an issue. Like the massacres of innocent children, and their families, because of differences in beliefs. Like the killing fields of war. Like the murder of 85 young people recently in the Norwegian youth camp. Like the riot in Vancouver in June when the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup.

I was in Vancouver at the time. There had been signs saying, “Go Canucks!” all over the city for at least two months, since my previous visit. Even the control tower at the airport displayed one. Although I am Canadian by birth, I tend to be oblivious to hockey activities. I found out the game was that day when someone I was arranging to meet with told me we had to be done by 5 p.m. when the game started. He explained that he had been waiting for forty years for this moment! Vancouverites were convinced their team’s time had come, and they were ready to celebrate.

The Canucks’ loss to the Boston Bruins came as a huge shock. Then, a riot broke out. Losing was humiliating enough, but now the news went out to the world that beautiful Vancouver was the scene of burning cars and broken windows.

What was not as publicized was the moving response of thousands of Vancouverites who showed up the next morning to clean up. The city provided the tools, and the volunteers got to work. Perhaps even more touching were the poetic expressions of remorse and love for Vancouver that appeared on boards coving the windows. Vancouverites wanted to show who they really are.

Word came quickly that the riot was started by a few anarchists who had planned the event beforehand; it was essentially unrelated to feelings about the Canucks losing.

Now, this is unnatural violence. Or is it?

What is Natural?

What does it actually mean for something to be natural or unnatural? We see that we humans have devised extremely artificial lives for ourselves, but does this make us unnatural? When a baby is born, is it an expression of culture or of nature?

The question of nature vs. nurture has raged for years in the worlds of genetics, education, and society. How does a child, apparently born in innocence, become a cold-hearted criminal? Or politician? Or military general? Or businessman? We have all encountered examples of what we consider immoral behavior. We have all heard of the accused showing no remorse, perhaps even being proud of whatever horrendous act they have committed. Psychopaths and sociopaths are known to be short on empathy. How did they get to be this way?

And how did the people of Vancouver come to be people who care about their city and each other? We tend to only hear the bad news, but what of the millions of people doing good in the world? How did they come to be this way? In the riot, what determined who joined in the violence and who called on the city via Facebook to come and clean up?

I consider these questions incredibly important. As I sit with them, I am reminded of my years of Vipassana meditation. I remember the teacher, S. N. Goenka, explaining that there are no evil people; they are either ignorant or ill. We are asked to practice compassion. I believe it is also valuable, however, to ask, how illness and ignorance have become so rampant.

My own search for sanity and health in this often insane, sick world, led me to my body. In studying Somatic Psychology and Dance/Movement Therapy, I learned that what we consider evil acts are impossible for someone aware of sensations in the body. It is simply too painful for us to hurt another person. In order to do so, we must be dissociated from our body sensations.

Dissociation is a common state in our modern, western world. You could say it is characteristic of our culture. I remember in first grade as a six-year old having to sit at our desks with hands clasped in front of us. This torture was intended to enable us to listen better, without moving.

Anyone familiar with child development knows that little children cannot learn without moving. As little ones we learn through our bodies. It is only as the brain and nervous system matures and we become more left-brain dominant, that we can integrate verbal, intellectual information. Being forced to function in this way before we are ready creates a split, characteristic of the modern world. This is a natural reaction to an unnatural situation…

Where Did My Body Go?

In our cultural experience, mind and body are separated. Without access to our sensations, we lose our ability to know directly through experience. We stumble blindly out of Eden. We are then directed by external sources, whether we conform or reject their edicts. Acting in reaction to an outside demand is just as externally referenced as is conformity. Neither involves the guidance of an internal knowing.

Unfortunately, this severance from our own bodies often starts before we go to school. Truthfully, I don’t remember the sitting with hands clasped as torture. I remember needing to do what the teachers wanted, to be accepted. I couldn’t fathom acting in a deviant way at that age. It felt too dangerous. Survival depended on conformity.

Dissociation was already familiar to me by the time I entered school. I believe I learned about it as I was being born.

The Initiation of Birth

Birth is perhaps not meant to be entirely easy. I believe it is intended to be an initiation, for both mother and baby, and perhaps for father, siblings and others in the family. I have heard that women can have orgasms while giving birth. I have witnessed babies being born smiling and curious. This was not at all what my birth was like.

My mother describes how she was enjoying the contractions because they told her the baby was coming. Then, the doctor gave her a “whiff of something,” and she was gone. I was gone, too. She thinks this was near the end, but my sense was that the whiff was closer to the beginning, and she just doesn’t remember what happened after that. She thinks they might have brought me to her right after the birth, but she doesn’t really know. She wasn’t really there. Neither was I.

Starting life in a drugged stupor is now known to establish a strong imprint for how we live our lives. Research has shown that the rise in recreational drug abuse correlates to the rise in use of birth anesthesia in the 40s and 50s. These babies were reaching adolescence in the 60s. The drug imprint at birth includes a message for life: when things get stressful, take a drug!

Fortunately, I didn’t go the route of drug addiction, but I did live the first twenty-something years of my life with minimal awareness of my body sensations. Anesthesia is designed to cut us off from sensation.

Drugs are not the only source of separation from our senses. Trauma and shock can also have this effect. When we feel threatened and are not able to fight or fly, we withdraw. Nature supports us in not having to feel the pain of being eaten by the saber-toothed tiger. Babies who are terrified, including at birth, are not strong enough to fight or fly. They try to get help by crying, but, if they are not responded to, their overwhelm causes them to withdraw. They may then become quiet, good babies, like I was. Often such babies are in shock, or dissociated from present time. You can see a glazed look in their eyes.

When I was little, it was considered normal for babies to be floppy and unresponsive little vegetables. We were far too drugged and shocked to be able to respond to what was occurring around us. All people seemed to notice was that we were cute.

I was amazed at the first birth I attended. That little girl lifted her head almost before the rest of her body was born. She clearly wanted to see what each of us in the room looked like. She carefully looked each of us over before settling in to her mother’s arms to gaze at that special face. She was born at home with no drugs and plenty of loving support.

Initiated to What?

So, lets come back to those who commit violence and those who go home and contact everyone they know by Facebook to invite them to clean up their city. Of course, birth is not everything. We all have lives and experiences after birth, as well as before. We can encounter trauma at any time. We can encounter love and support at any time. These all have their effects.

In my own healing process, I was fortunate to spend ten years studying Prenatal and Birth Psychology, culminating in a doctoral degree in the subject. This is the study of the time before and around birth and how it affects us throughout our lives.

One of the books that influenced me most deeply through these studies was Ghosts from the Nursery, by Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith S. Wiley.  This book outlines how neglect and abuse, including at birth, affect the child’s ability to self-regulate emotionally, and contribute to acts of violence later in life.

Those studying early attachment emphasize our need to be met by our caregivers, to have eye contact, smiling faces, reassuring touch. This enables us to feel safe. Then, we can be settled enough to interact with and learn from our environment. If we are not met in this way, we learn on a deep, physiological level, to be hyper-vigilently prepared for threat at any moment. With our sympathetic fight-flight nervous system on guard, we may perceive the need for violence and act accordingly.

Even before birth, our genes are being turned on or off depending on our environment. Cell biologist, Bruce Lipton points out in The Biology of Belief that the mother’s perception of her surround as safe and nurturing or as threatening profoundly affects this genetic process in her unborn child. The baby prepares for the world he or she will be born into. The mother, through her experience and hormonal responses, provides information about that world.

Epidemiological studies demonstrate that babies growing in the womb during times of drought prepare for this world by developing more efficient metabolisms. If their world turns out to provide plenty of food, they tend to be overweight. Similarly, babies whose mothers live in violent household or in war during pregnancy, tend to have different brain proportions than babies of more harmonious environments. In preparation for surviving in a threatening environment, brain development emphasizes structures needed to detect and respond quickly to threat. A nurturing prenatal environment is linked to having a larger frontal lobe, with emphasis on verbal and reasoning skills.

Fortunately, as psychiatrist, Thomas Verny, pointed out in the Secret Life of the Unborn Child, a fetus who is loved "is an amazingly resilient being.” I would expand this concept to say that love can help at any age. Our social engagement system can be rekindled at any time within an appropriate relational holding field.

A Larger Context

Violence is not so simple. We learn early in life about trust. An individual living in violent ways may not be open to the possibility of anything else. There may have been many different kinds of influences to this person’s behavior. How they were received at birth and before can have a profound effect, as can their early childhood attachment history. These are not acting in a void, however. The child arrives with his or her own tendencies. Karma. We haven’t even looked at the possibility of choosing or being drawn to a particular family for reasons science is only beginning to explain.

We all exist within a larger vibrational field. Within that field, the watery cells of our bodies develop, interact and express themselves. This is natural. If the field around us connotes violent, would it not be natural to develop our own forms of violence? If love is our context, we naturally tend towards love.

Perhaps our question is not about what is natural or not. Perhaps the question needs to be about the field that generates us, the field that nurtures us, and what are our natural gestures and actions within such fields.

From this place, do we even need to remind ourselves of compassion? As observers and inquirers into the nature of our field, we need not engage in judgment, preference or other separative attitudes. Instead, we discover we are all expressions of the same field. We are all one. We are all responsible. We are all influential. We are all important. We are all nature. We are all nurture. Perhaps, there are ways in which we are violent, and perhaps, this is the place to begin our search for change.

I leave you with a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh from The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh:

Call Me By My True Names

Don't say that I will depart tomorrow --

even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving

to be a bud on a Spring branch,

to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,

learning to sing in my new nest,

to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,

to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,

to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death

of all that is alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing

on the surface of the river.

And I am the bird

that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily

in the clear water of a pond.

And I am the grass-snake

that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,

my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.

And I am the arms merchant,

selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,

refugee on a small boat,

who throws herself into the ocean

after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am the pirate,

my heart not yet capable

of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,

with plenty of power in my hands.

And I am the man who has to pay

his "debt of blood" to my people

dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm

it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.

My pain is like a river of tears,

so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,

so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can wake up,

and so the door of my heart

can be left open,

the door of compassion.

Messages from Nature?

Perhaps, it is not surprising to have an increase in encounters with nature as the weather warms, trees blossom, and the earth dons her most colourful outfits. The surprise for me has been an increase in my encounters with birds.

It began last week when I returned home from shopping. As I was arranging the groceries, I heard a strange sound in the living room. Investigating, I discovered a dove, thrashing herself again and again against the stairwell window. We were both shocked by the discovery.

I couldn’t imagine how she had gotten into the house, which added to the mystique. For a moment, I wondered if this could be real. All the doors and windows were closed and had been all day. She certainly seemed real, however.

As a primate with a well-developed social nervous system, I was quickly able to calm myself down, using my pre-frontal cortex to assess that I was safe even in this strange, inexplicable situation. I immediately felt empathic resonance with this poor bird, who had somehow strayed into the house and was now trapped in a useless window sill, repeatedly trying to escape through the unrelenting glass of a window that would not open. Sensing her fright, my heart opened to this suffering being.

I began applying my therapeutic skills to help her calm down and enter the possibility of perceiving me as ally rather than enemy. As I spoke to her softly, she began to settle. Instead of bashing herself into the window, she sat in frozen observation of potential danger. I continued to reassure her that I meant no harm and intended to help. Gradually, her freeze began to thaw. I could see her small body soften. Her stare seemed to shift from pure terror to wondrous curiosity.

This Way Out Please!

At this point, I began my mission of helping her leave the house. I gently explained my plan, as I moved slowly to the dining room doors across the room and opened them wide for her. I tried to demonstrate to her that I could go outside this way, suggesting she could, too. She watched me carefully, but did not budge. I moved slowly over to a chair closer to her. She eyed my every move. I sat where I sensed the edge of her energetic territory, settling myself deeper, as I would in working with a cranial client. Then, I set about sending her a visual message, explaining in pictures how she could easily leave the house through the open dining room door. After a few minutes, I told her I would leave the room so she could fly out without having to pass me. I closed the door behind me as I went into the kitchen to put away the rest of the groceries, staying as calm and quiet as I could.

After about five minutes, I heard a small crash in the living room. My impulse was to rush in and make sure she was ok, but I restrained myself. Staying as quiet as I could, I peeked through the living room door. There she was on the lower step below the window sill.

I began to worry about my new housemate. What if she had broken a wing in her mad efforts to escape? Maybe she couldn’t fly and had fallen to the lower step. It should have been easy for her to hop down from the window sill and down the two steps into the living room. It should have been easy for her to fly to the open door. Why had she crash landed?

Not knowing what else to do, I again followed my cranial training. I calmed myself and deepened into my sense of ground and heart, while widening my awareness. I softly backed out of the living room door, giving her more space to find her way. Even in the midst of my concern, I trusted the innate intelligence of this being in my presence. I held her in my heart with that trust and compassion, and waited for her bio-intelligence to express more fully.

As part of grounding myself further, I quietly prepared and ate my dinner, giving my companion all the space she might need to find her way outdoors. Over the next hour or so, there were a few more crashes. I decided to leave her be, in case my presence was just adding to her trauma.

Finally, with dusk approaching and my belly full, I peeked again through the living room door. There she was, still sadly perched by the uncooperative window. For a moment, I felt hopeless. Perhaps, that was what she was feeling. I surmised that she had not understood my directions to the door, and had returned to her efforts to go through the window.

Not sure if this window would even open, I gently approached her, explaining that I would try to open it for her. She startled briefly as I approached, but seemed to quickly understand that I was not going to hurt her. Reaching over her to explore the window, I could not avoid getting too close. The dove began again wildly fluttering her wings in futile efforts to go through the glass. To give her more space I removed the vase beside her on the sill, which she had remarkably not knocked over.

I discovered that the window actually opened, but only on the top, about a foot above her. Clearing the space for her, I again tried to communicate that this was a way out. Completely ignoring my advice, she desperately smashed into the glass.

Negotiating Contact

Finally, I saw no choice but to help her more manually. I had never picked up a bird like this before. I’m not sure who felt more nervous about this procedure. Her behaviour actually suggested it might be me! After gently explaining to her that, if she would not go outside on her own, I would need to pick her up with the towel in my hands, she seemed to consider the situation briefly before coming down from the window sill and perching herself directly in front of me. She looked at me as if to say, “Come on, already! I’ve been waiting for hours!”

As carefully as I could, I slowly brought the towel in my hands around her body. The moment the towel touched her feathers, she startled again and began flapping furiously. She headed right back into the window.

Calming myself down, as well as her, I spoke as soothingly as I could. After a moment, she quieted and then did a very remarkable thing. She came back down from the window sill and returned to me, standing in the best possible position for me to pick her up. This time I made my hold firmer, having seen that she did not break quite as easily as I had feared.

It seemed like instinct for her wings to struggle as soon as the towel contacted them. This time I held on, trying to lift her to the open window. In the process, her wings got loose. I found myself just holding her tail. I continued to lift, and suddenly, she slipped out of my grip and flew across the room directly to the open door and outside!

I imagine her being at least as relieved as I was. I also began to wonder how she knew to go to that open door, instead of out some other closed window. Perhaps, she had understood my communication, after all. Perhaps, she was actually trying to communicate something important to me!

Bird Number Two… and Three…

Needless to say, this dove has stayed with me, continuing to feed my consciousness in mysterious ways. Shortly after her visitation, I encountered another quite different bird.

We were driving along the country lane, heading home from my Continuum workshop last Sunday. Suddenly, there was a magnificent range of colours in front of us. A peacock was strutting slowly across the road in full display!

I had only recently discovered that peacocks frequently live at the old manor houses in Devon. This one seemed like a very special gift, determined to awaken us to the wonders of life, of nature, of the moment.

I began to be curious about this synchronicity of events, meeting with two birds in such unusual ways within such a short period of time. Two days later, a third bird entered the picture.

My Tuesday evening Continuum class occurs at a beautiful old house in the countryside outside of our ancient Elizabethan town of Totnes. Here is where a few weeks earlier I had first heard the call of a peacock, and was shown an apparently respected member of the Bowden House community.

Last week, I invited each person in the class to speak their name into the circle, as we all settled with awareness of our breath and bodies and allowed ourselves to receive the vibrations of each person’s name. As we completed speaking our names into the circle, a high-pitched cry entered our space. We all laughed, realizing that the peacock outside wanted to be acknowledged as part of our circle.

With this third bird, I could no longer deny that something seemed to be happening for me with birds. The question was, what?

Meaning, Messages, and More

Can we ever really know the whole of what is being communicated to us? Did these bird events actually mean something? Or were they simply coincidence? I suppose I make choices in relation to the synchronicities in my life. I choose to receive them as intelligent expressions of an intelligent universe. I’m not actually sure I could function in my world without this choice. It would be too meaningless, too empty, too pointless. To me, there is delight and possibility available in every moment, but only if I make the choices that enable me to open to this.

Within this context, I considered the sudden frequency of bird representatives in my life. I had originally thought the dove in my house was a pigeon. When I realized its long neck indicated it was a dove, I felt a little shiver down my spine. I have been told that one meaning of my name, Cherionna, is “Song of the Dove.” I mentioned the strange visitation to my husband when he returned home. He reminded me that, just before our marriage, we sited two white doves necking on our roof. They seemed to be reminding us of what we were capable of.

Doves have been a sacred symbol in different cultures of peace, love, innocence, renewal of life and even the Holy Spirit. Their appearance is a beautiful reminder of something we all long for. Homing pigeons, of course, are historically messengers. Doves, however, carry their message simply by being who they are.

Perhaps, the message is that simple. I, as Song of the Dove, can carry my message by being who I am. My work and teaching has so much to do with the power of being. Was the dove there to teach me further how to be?

My experience of being with her was at least as intimate and touching as my time with clients in the treatment room. I have always appreciated the possibility of being so close to another human being. There is something very precious about this. It is like being with a newborn baby. As we settle into being, that purity of presence that we come in with seems to infuse the space between us.

I used to marvel at the depth of interaction that often occurred with my patients when I worked as an Occupational Therapist in hospitals. People suffering with pain or having just lost their ability to function through a stroke or accident would open like little ones and reveal their deepest fears and hopes. I always felt honored to meet them, just as I do now with my clients and students. There is nothing I find as satisfying as having my heart touched by another being.

This is what the dove offered me. For the entire time we were together, we shared a state of pure presence.  And I was touched.

The peacocks were not so close to me. Their messages were visual and auditory. Although we did not connect heart-to-heart, they penetrated my bodily experience. The colours of the one on the road stimulated my nervous system, which seemed quite excited by the show. The piercing sound of the Bowden peacock vibrated through my tissues, as a member of my weekly group. I suspect he will be back next class. As with all my students, I imagine he will have more to teach me over time.

Earth Meditation

Imagine the earth, green, blue, round, and in your hands. Can you hold this planet with the love and tenderness you might hold a newborn baby? Can you love her, our mother, as she has us? She is always there, no matter how we treat her, how we take her for granted. The Great Mother holds us, whether we appreciate her or not, whether we acknowledge her or not, whether we rest into her support or pretend we can manage on our own.

Sometimes, it seems to me, we are like teenagers with our mother. We try to prove ourselves more grown up than we are, and, in so doing, discover we need mom after all.

I have been so deeply touched by my experience of the tsunami in Japan. As I wrote in my last blog entry, I felt its wave move through my own body as I watched it on my computer screen. I knew in that moment that the earth and I were one. I knew that I could be directly touched by an event on the other side of the planet. I realized then that this must work both ways. The planet, too, could be affected by me.

This is not just about recycling plastics so they don’t end up in the ocean. This is not just about hugging a tree or reducing consumption. This is about life, about every moment of life.

Since feeling the wave of the tsunami move through my body, my life and work have become a prayer. With each breath, with each step, with each word, I intend to pray for the earth, and all beings who share her with me.

A Simple Meditation

Recently, I guided my Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy practitioner training in a simple two-minute meditation for the earth. I suggested we imagine holding the planet the way we hold a client’s head.  As we settled quietly in our seats and closed our eyes, I had a powerful vision. I saw water. I saw the water of the earth. Sparkling streams tumbling and pouring over rocks. Glistening with health.

Like the earth, we are made up mostly of water. The fluids in our bodies – blood, lymph, cerebrospinal fluid, the cytoplasmic fluid in every cell – all breathe subtle rhythms related to the mysterious forces of life, itself. And the earth, and its fluids, breathe with us.

In Biodynamics we orient to the inherent health always present in our clients. If I hold the earth as a client, I may at first be overwhelmed by the pain she presents. Besides the amassing of plastic in her oceans, her dying forests, graying skies, and rising fever, there is the suffering. Broken hearts, children lost to war, to crime, to sex and technology. Animals crying in the last of the dark crevices. I could go on. But wait! I hold the earth in my hands, and the waters shine.

Last week, as I walked by the Wilamette River in Portland, a humming bird strafed me. Knowing she had caught my eye, she hovered impossibly over a new spring flower, tempting me to join her in another view.

Where is the Health?

 As I travel the world far too often these days, I cannot deny the beauty I encounter everywhere. I write this on a huge Boeing 707 from somewhere between Vancouver and London. The skies are dark. We seem to travel through eternal night, yet the beauty is even here.

Across the aisle, a small girl sleeps after playing and laughing for the first three hours of the flight. I played with her, reflecting back the funny faces she would make. Simple acts, like closing and opening her eyes, became a delightful game to share. She is so young, not even talking yet. She has not learned to limit her play. Her eagerness has no bounds. Beauty everywhere. Fluid play.

Next to me sits a man who earlier lost his way to the lavatory. His wife explains he has some memory loss and she cannot take him many places. This instantly dissolves my earlier annoyance for his timing at wanting to get past me to the aisle the moment I have settled in with my meal tray and movie. Now, as he returns confused, I interrupt my dinner and movie one more time to gently guide him to the hidden little room he seeks and show him how to open the door.

This, too, is beautiful. Human beingness. We have hearts. Mine opens. Presence. Prayer to the earth. I sense the glow within. I sense the suffering. What does it mean to grow old? Where is the health here?

What a beautiful thing that I can feel this! I used to watch movies to make me cry. Now, I just live.

We humans are blessed with a social nervous system. It enables us to communicate, to hear, to see, to love and feel loved. Without it, we do poorly. We may even die. With it, we can engage with each other to enhance our survival. We can also listen. We can listen to the each other, but also to the earth. Birds singing. Tummies rumbling. Brooks bubbling…

Listen! There is a resonance between the fluids of the earth. The waters of the sea and the waters of our bodies sing to one another. If we listen, we can understand, perhaps, what our mother has been trying to tell us. If we listen, we might discover how to help. If we listen, we might find our lives become a prayer. Listen! Please!

Resting in the Space Between: Part II – The Relational Field

As two beings come together, the space between precedes them. We emerge from an energetic field, and move within it throughout our lives, and through our relationships.

We meet another within a larger matrix that does not judge us for our appearance, thoughts, preferences, history, or personality. The pain we may associate with relationship is not inherent to relating. It is something we bring with us. On some level, often unconscious, we expect the pain to show up, just as it has in the past. When it does not, we wait. We wait for the other shoe to fall. Does this sound familiar?

Who are we, really, as we come together? Two beings. Two beings with faces we have carefully painted over the years. We have created ourselves so perfectly to meet our circumstances in life that we may have forgotten who we are beneath the façade. Who do we be?

Perhaps an even more important question is “How do we be together?” How can we be together, allowing our history to be there with us, without it determining our interactions? What would it be like to just be with one another? What would it be like to have no conscious or unconscious demands for how our friend, spouse, teacher, neighbour, or that person on the street must act? How would it be to be?

The Relational Field

Franklyn Sills in his book due out this month, Foundations of Craniosacral Biodynamics, refers to “the relational field” between two individuals. This is where we meet each other energetically, sensing the other via resonance. We seem to have a direct knowing of one another.

We all have this experience. Have you ever walked into a room full of strangers, like a party, and immediately felt drawn to some and repulsed by others? What information were those feelings based on? Some might be visual (a field phenomenon). One of the strangers looks like someone you have unfinished business with, and you want to avoid. Or you see a woman who has dark hair like your favourite aunt, and you want to get to know her.

Whether you process these visual cues consciously or not, they contribute to your perception of others. We sense each other in many ways, however. Like visual stimuli, other information comes to us via the space between us.

Visually, we sense patterns of light. We may perceive movement, or facial expressions. Our bodies respond to these stimuli, often without our conscious awareness. Mirror neurons in our brains register certain movements as if we were making them, ourselves. The same neurons fire when we watch someone lick an ice cream cone or when we have our own cone to lick.

These mirror neurons are believed to explain children’s ability to learn through imitation, as well as our capacity for empathy. They may begin to explain the subtle communication experienced within the relational field established between a practitioner and client.

As practitioner, for example, I may sense a pain in my shoulder reflecting that of my client. I can use this information to help me understand what is happening within the client. Similarly, how I am in my own body-mind can influence how the client is. In Biodynamics, we practice calming and grounding within ourselves as practitioners, which facilitates such settling in our clients.

A Larger Field

The relational field between us begins to settle and come into resonance as we get to know each other and feel safe. When we have a sense of trust for another, our sympathetic (fight-flight) nervous system can relax. We can begin to rest together in the present moment, settling into a state of being. This is true when we come together as practitioner and client, as two friends, or as a group.

When I teach classes, I generally ask the participants to say something in the group, even if it is just their names. I usually make a point of speaking for a few minutes first so those who don’t know me can begin to settle in relation to me, as leader of the group. Then, they can feel more comfortable to speak in the group. Once each person has spoken, there is usually a sense of the whole group field settling. We begin to relax as we have more of a sense of those we are with.

Interestingly, this is true for little ones just born, and even before birth. While these little ones have less developed brains and nervous systems, there is abundant evidence from the field of Prenatal and Birth Psychology that prenates and newborns are extremely sensitive to the relational field around them. How do they sense the nature of this field, even before their eyes are open, or their ears are developed?

Even single-celled organisms respond to the energetic field around them. Within our own bodies, our cells communicate mysteriously through resonance. While scientists effort to explain how we know what we know, all we can really ascertain is that we know.

There seems to be a direct knowing, a communication not only between our cells, but also between our beings. The space between is relationally full!

Visual and auditory perceptions are amongst the more obvious aspects of our common field. There are other, more subtle expressions we are usually not consciously aware of.

Ancestors in Action

On a personal level, each of us carries the field of our families. This is expressed in part through our genetic appearance, but our ancestral field includes expressions we may not see or hear. We do, however, sense them on some level. Those raised in a violent household, for example, tend to be drawn to violence in their later relationships. The violence may, however, skip a generation.

We may find ourselves participating in relational experiences akin to those of our grandparents or great grandparents. Lets say your great grandmother lived in a Jewish village ravaged by Russian pogroms. The resonance of that terror may have been carried down through the generations, with each new child, including you, going through life with a mysterious sense of fear. Perhaps, as a child, you were extremely shy and no one could understand why. An unconscious expectation of unpredictable violence plagues you and your family without even being acknowledged. 

When I was a child, I remember people commenting on how scared I looked and how shy I was. I didn’t experience myself as either frightened or shy, but that unconscious shadow material inherited from my ancestors was blatantly apparent to others not involved in my family system. I carried this energy with me into every relational field I entered. Years of work on myself enhanced my awareness of this influence, reducing its unconscious expression in my relationships.

Prayers for the Suffering

Fortunately, we are attuned not only to our own ancestors, but also with all other beings. I have been deeply touched by the news of the recent tsunami in Japan. A few days ago, I watched a video of the tsunami emailed to me by a friend. Observing the waves destroy the town, I was struck by the sense in my own body of a resonant motion. It was as if the giant wave were sludging through my tissues, rocking my own fluid body.

Feeling the enormity of this natural catastrophe so directly led me beyond my previous sadness and compassion. It reinforced my sense of need for prayerful being in relation to the Japanese tragedy. I could not deny the connection I felt with the people on the film helplessly watching the watery devastation. It didn’t just happen to them. It happened to all of us.

I feel the pain and chaos in Japan as if it were inside my own body. I sense a similar connection with the people suffering in Japan as I do with my clients settling in a Biodynamic craniosacral therapy session. Similarly, I can offer Japan the depth of stillness I know in my own system.

I know of other practitioners who travel across the planet to troubled places like Haiti and Japan to help. This does not seem to be my role here. My place seems to be to offer and teach the power of what I tend to see as prayer, of communing through intention and stillness.

Prayer has been shown to have an effect on others, even across great distances. One explanation for how this might work is that we are composed primarily of water, a highly resonant element. Research has shown that meditating with an intention to change the pH of water, can have that effect, even across the planet. If I sit in awareness of the dynamic stillness within each of us, with an intention to share its beneficial effects, others can benefit.

One with the Cosmos

Our relational field seems to be much larger than we might have imagined. If our fluid bodies resonate with each other, is it possible to not be in relationship with all beings?

When we consider the composition of the cosmos is also water, we can begin to appreciate how vast our relational field may actually be.

Rather than unconsciously, habitually re-enacting the historical influences we carry in our field, we can begin to rest in the larger space between us. Instead of just resonating with the pain and the past, we can settle into a state of being where we resonate more fully with the spaciousness of the cosmos.

We return to source.  Possibilities emerge that we had never imagined in our more narrow perspective. Our hearts open. Ah, there is love…